Trying to start up a small business is hard work and involves a lot of advertising which can get expensive. Why not try to save some money by making your own marketing materials? There are hundreds of DIY posts on making things like T-shirts, paper pads, coffee mugs, etc. So when I spotted one in how to print on fabric using your very own printer I couldn't resist. Now I can sew up tote bags, hand warmers or eye pillows with my logo on them. All for the cost of my labor and a few cheap supplies I already have around the house.
Looking through this fabulous post on six ways to print on fabric I think I've hit the jackpot until I realize I don't have any of the supplies necessary to complete any of the six methods and it's too late to acquire them from the store. :(
I dejectedly put that one aside for another day and continue to troll through my posts for something to do. Then I find a post on how to do a wax paper transfer. This in itself would be great for making coffee mugs or other things with my logo on it, but then I think why not modify it to print on fabric. After all the only reason I couldn't do the other methods is because I lacked the various adhesive materials to attach the stabilizer to the fabric. In this tutorial, however, they simply use tape to attach the wax paper to a piece of card stock. This I can do. I giggle a little and hop to it.
Step 1: cut a piece of fabric about an inch smaller all the way around than your piece of paper.
Step 2: I then used tape to attach my fabric to the piece of paper making sure there were no frayed bits or fabric overhanging the paper (apparently this keeps your fabric from catching in the printer and jamming it up).
Step 3: use your computer to find an image for printing. I used a word processing program to create columns of my logo spaced just so. This took the most time and was incredibly frustrating. I'm no computer genius. What I need is a graphics designer. Or come to think of it I'm sure my eleven year old niece, Butterfly could do it much better and faster then me. Puts me to shame really. Oh well.
Step 4: Load the paper, mine was fabric side down but you may need to mark a sheet of paper on one side and run it through to see which side it printed on. Make sure to have the fabric side on the side that the printing will be on. Duh I know but it's easy to make a mistake here.
Step 5: press print and wait and see what comes out. Cross your fingers it doesn't jam. J/K there was no problem for me.
As you can see it didn't turn out so well for me. It was somewhat blurry and smudged all over the place. I'm honestly not sure what went wrong. In theory it should have worked.
I'm determined to find out what went wrong or buy the proper materials and make it right but today I'm tired and a little disappointed. Until next time. Wish me luck.
No comments:
Post a Comment